Social Energy for Peacebuilding and Development

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Social Energy for Peacebuilding and Development
FutureGenerations

• An inter-disciplinary
• inter-cultural
• platform for augmenting
• just and lasting change
• Respond to both
• Dan Wessner (wessner_at_future.org) and
  (dan.wessner_at_emu.edu)

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Guiding question for this study

• There is an urgent need for effective methods to
  engage people in peacebuilding in countries of
  rising instability or post-conflict rebuilding.
• An increasing number of countries face a downward
  spiral of instability even though governments and
  international bodies seek diverse means to halt
  and reverse this trend. Still among countries
  emerging from conflict, one-half revert to
  conflict within five years.
• Guiding question How then shall people and
  communities be effectively engaged in a
  peacebuilding and development process that
  sustains itself?

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People factor and social energy

• So long as expertise resides in the hands of
  top-down and outside-in academic, geopolitical,
  legislating, and economic actors, there will be a
  dearth of bottom-up or people-oriented
  methodologies to engage communities in just and
  lasting change.
• Yet the role of citizens in transitional states
  has long been acknowledged as essential for just
  and sustainable change.
• For we know that peace accords do not make peace.
  Neither does the arrival of international
  peacekeepers or development experts.
• While these powerful statements and legions of
  actors can be effective stimuli, the real
  enjoyment of a more secure, peaceable and
  promising life derives from the energy of
  community-based initiatives.
• These can create a positive deviance leading
  toward peace and development vis-à-vis
  governments, corporations, and militaries.

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From mere advocacy to policymaking if just and
lasting change are to occur

• While progress has been made in the empowerment
  of people to help effect their own path toward
  peace and development, there remains discursive
  violence or a gap of knowledge and skills such
  that governments and experts are the presumed
  deliverers of state and societal goals. What of
  the people, themselves?
• Following the American-Vietnam War years, the
  challenge was to equip advocates for change to
  become skilled practitioners of peacebuilding.
  Following this wave of practitioner-oriented
  training programs, there has been a concerted
  effort to enable practitioners to become
  scholar-practitioners grounded in empirical and
  cross-disciplinary skills such that they may
  build convincing arguments for alternative
  state-societal accord.
• But even as this scholar-practitioner endeavor is
  honed, there are two further significant
  challenges before us.
• One, scholar-practitioners must acquire abilities
  to lead and write policy.
• Two, linguistic and digital divides hamper
  effective and equitable training and networking
  among scholar-practitioners.

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So let us use the guiding question and several
linked Power Points to generate an analytical and
evaluative dialogue about people-oriented change.

• How then shall people and communities be
  effectively engaged in a peacebuilding and
  development process that sustains itself?
• Here is an outline of how I mean to develop this
  question and our dialogue
• Introduce a SEED-SCALE method to harness energy
  of social change
• Present examples of SEED-SCALE practices already
  underway in four areas of instability and
  post-conflict rebuilding Afghanistan, Peru, Four
  Great Rivers, and the Tibet Autonomous Region of
  China
• Introduce Inter-cultural communicative competence
  (IC3) as a language-development platform to
  augment co-mentoring among scholar-participants
  and leader-policymakers in these and other
  regions
• Provide further information on FutureGenerations
  and its Masters program for community-based
  scholar-practitioner-leader-policymakers

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SEED-SCALE methodology to harness the energy of
social change

• Open this hyperlink (right click with your
  mouse) seed-scale_simple_0306.ppt. Be patient
  as this 23 slide Power Point has a number of
  attachments that unfold with each slide. Use
  your right arrow key to advance these
  attachments.
• Respond with your questions and critique. Think
  especially of applications that might be possible
  in your own context. In doing so, begin your
  question and critique by introducing yourself,
  explaining your communitys identity, and
  articulating your own community-based work.
• Respond to dan.wessner_at_emu.edu and
  wessner_at_future.org. We will share these comments
  with others joining in this cyber-class.

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A Peruvian example of SEED-SCALE in post-war
provision of health care

• Once we have processed the basics of this
  methodology and heard your questions and
  critique, we will open up certain case studies of
  SEED-SCALE applications
• Open the following by right clicking Open
  Hyperlink Peru-PPT_0906.ppt.
• Respond to dan.wessner_at_emu.edu and
  wessner_at_future.org with your questions and
  constructive critique.

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Afghan, Tibetan and 4 Great Rivers SEED-SCALE
examples in areas of instability

• Open this Afghan example by right clicking your
  mouse on Open Hyperlink afghanistan_0106.ppt.
  Respond to dan.wessner_at_emu.edu and
  wessner_at_future.org with your questions and
  constructive critique.
• Open this Tibetan example by right clicking your
  mouse on Open Hyperlink pendeba.ppt. Again,
  respond with your questions and critique.
• And open this inter-state water example from the
  Four Great Rivers by right clicking your mouse on
  Open Hyperlink FourGreatRivers0906.ppt. And
  respond again with questions and critique.

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Would SEED-SCALE methods work in your context?

• Think through each component of the proposed
  methodology
• Have you a community-based success on which to
  build
• Have you the desire to nurture three-way
  partnerships
• Are your community members open to becoming
  scholar-practitioners making decisions on the
  basis of their own data
• Do you and your community wish to change?
• Have you the energy to sustain with monitoring,
  evaluation, and critical analysis each further
  step of just and lasting peace and development?

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How can these questions become pertinent to
engaged people and learning communities across
linguistic and Internet boundaries?

• In his seminal text, Development as Freedom,
  Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen argues that five
  freedoms must be advanced simultaneously if
  people are to have peace and development
• Economic capabilities
• Transparency of legislative and governmental
  decision making
• Physical security
• Political freedoms
• Social Opportunities -- our focus here .

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Social Opportunity

• Without privileging one of Sens five freedoms
  over the other four, it is crucial to understand
  the educational implications of the social
  opportunity freedom. In an inter-cultural online
  dialogue, how are correspondents to hear and
  learn of one anothers context, culture, and
  perspective? How can the chasm of digital and
  linguistic access be bridged?
• The following four slides present one alternative
  IC3, meaning Inter-Cultural Communicative
  Competence see www.emu.edu/ic3 for an overview
  of applications on our campus
• Respond with your questions and constructive
  critique to dan.wessner_at_emu.edu and
  wessner_at_future.org.

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Goals of IC3

• Overall competencies
• Inter-cultural linking learning communities
  across all continents
• Communicative teaching languages while
  instructing in methods of just and lasting
  community-based peacebuilding and development
• Competence expanding communities of learning
  and empathy
• Chapter-by-chapter learning competencies
• Guiding IC3 question each lesson, chapter and
  level of instruction links communities through
  their joint answer to a guiding question
• Language lessons that address IC3 question we
  have been testing this template with Vietnamese
  and English-speaking communities, and now have
  invitations to add Spanish, Chinese, Hindi,
  Czech, Farsi, Dari, and Thai communities
• Critical thinking intra- and inter-culturally
  All dialogue derives from the sharing of
  perspectives and critical thinking concerning ten
  topics of development
• Specific activities for augmenting syllabi
• Different countries, campuses, disciplines ? this
  is a learning platform, not a curriculum, and
  thus each participating community of learning
  writes its own syllabi
• Integrated language lessons ? each chapter builds
  listening/speaking, reading, and writing
  exercises off of the IC3 question and
  peacebuilding and development methodologies
• Shared foreign film and dialogue screenings ?
  every other Sunday online

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10 shared topics for communities of learning
these closely track SEED-SCALE and other
peacebuilding and development methodologies

• Identity
• Water and food security
• Primary and reproductive health
• Education
• Poverty reduction
• Economic change
• Regional and global trade
• Development partners
• Art and culture
• Globalization
• throughout, there is sensitivity to gender
  applications

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Critical (even empathetic) thinking near and far

• Blooms taxonomy
• Knowledge ? comprehension ? application ?
  analysis ? synthesis ? evaluation
• Most students and education systems focus on the
  memorization of basic knowledge. The IC3 and
  Future Generations approach to engaged people in
  communities of just and lasting peacebuilding and
  development calls upon a different sort of
  evolving inquiry.
• First, there are many perspectives on
  knowledge. This point is realized as
  communities of learning converse from many
  contexts.
• Second, students are thus challenged to
  comprehend the significance of any basic
  knowledge they must place facts in context
  theirs and others.
• Third, applied and comprehensive knowledge places
  learning back in the streets, in the fields, and
  in the lives of real people in real time.
• Fourth, analysis is a process of questioning,
  researching, and studying the effects of applied
  learning
• Fifth, synthesis compares results of analysis
  across different contexts
• Sixth, evaluation discerns effectiveness and
  usefulness of this process

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IC3, too, is based on dialogue in the expectation
that people participating from diverse learning
communities will explain themselves beyond their
own zone of familiarity and thus come to know
their own identity and culture better

• Tacit-Tacit when communicating with someone in
  ones own culture and context, sometimes very
  little need be said, for there is a tacit
  understanding of each others gestures and facial
  expressions.
• Tacit-Explicit when communicating beyond ones
  own culture, then one must explain oneself more
  intentionally explicating to other ones
  meaning in IC3, this is a given for communities
  of learning far and diverse from one another must
  continuously explain themselves.
• Explicit-Explicit when more than one community
  of learning is involved in IC3 co-learning, there
  is explicit-explicit dialogue occurring in
  addition, as the ten development and
  peacebuilding topics are addressed online and in
  each communitys context, the participants may
  call upon web-based secondary sources to augment
  their joint learning.
• Explicit-Tacit this is the fourth and crucial
  step of IC3 dialogue, for participants are
  encouraged to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate
  the learning that occurs for ones own benefit
  and that of all collaborators
• Cycle repeats with each new topic of dialogue and
  co-learning

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How then shall people and communities be
effectively engaged in a peacebuilding and
development process that sustains itself?
Final comments ? dan.wessner_at_emu.edu,
wessner_at_future.org